The Black Sacrament -- A Guide To Black Mage

Store TP does affect the TP values from Occult Acumen, Im sure a Taru on here did some testing on it not long back?

Trying to wrap my head around the linked lua and still need to work on my MP values and sets but ran into some other gotchas along they way.
I had to add this line to Mote-Globals.lua in the user_precast function to get spell degradation to work via normal casting
To get the //gs c nuke command to work I replaced
with

and updated job_self_command to

The original only lets you set one element before reloading as it overwrote the table with an element
eg. //gs c element Ice would work but if you did //gs c element Fire afterwards it would fail if you didn't reload the lua.

Edit:
I also had to update

It does. I actually have an Occult Acumen/Store TP build that I sometimes use for Impact. I use it to debuff HELM mobs just before a magic burst. Even fully resisted, the -20% attribute debuffs still last 11 seconds. The OA/STP build ends up netting me MP.

So then it begs the question- on a Death cape, what are we really getting out of 10MAB? Or would 10STP be a better choice?

I will be moving soon. Looking forward to updating guide after.

Going to add tables, pictures hopefully, and clean up the guide.
Probably won't be untill around Christmas. Stuck using phone untill after move.

Okay Node is updated, took a while longer than expected with gear edits etc with new gear shaking up a few gear sets. with each set Byrne put some comments that are worth reading. Mostly why and what needed to be changed for a set and in some cases when it is more applicable to use a different set. My job was easy editing things, also changed color in tables. (almost all changes were made after Gear sets unless I was fixing spacing etc)

Now back to making a new lua for sch from scratch :D well I am stealing some bits from our blm lua.

I am sure you have this but 2 of my favorites for gearswap are toggles on/off for af coat and magic burst/regular nuke set

Yeah those toggles are a god send also i learned more about binding commands in lua so maybe i can make more extensive kb binds or just change the bind to be more convenient for me. there is actually a program that can make a second keyboard that if i could bind to i could use a second keyboard full of binds and do away with in game macro's all together. lol but that is a project for later. NN guys

Getting to BLM to 99 soon using this campaign, any AF pieces worth reforging if I have Almaric (Except head)/Merlinic?

These are my MB set and Drain/Aspir set

ItemSet 348772

ItemSet 348009

Merlin hands have drain/aspir and yes, I have elemental obi.

I'm looking for BLM specific equipment, already got a Lathi and I'll get an ambu mantle as soon I can. I know AF3 feet are good for manawall, even if farming aby drives me nut.

Also I may have missed it in the OP, but does MB bonus from JP stack with MB Damage from gears? Or it works within the 40%?

You'll want to reforge the body.

Spaekona's coat? For the MP return?

Yup, its pretty great.

Af3 feet are needed and a beast when paired with a decent dt set and ambuscade cape. (edited on pc stupid phone and auto correct ><)

Lol with the updated body order of worth has gone up, the macc is better than sadir.

I should make an annotation about this. I'll do some testing, but I'm pretty sure you're right, statistically it seems like the Store TP would be more useful in the long run.

I apologize if this has been asked before, but, I can't seem to find an answer... for Merlinic gear, if I'm aiming for MACC/MAB, what stones will yield the most consistent results? I see per the BG Wiki, it shows some stones can "break" the cap, or, so I'm told (T for Attributes and F for MDMG/MBurst, etc), but, does that also effect MACC/MAB?

I'm aiming for at least +30 and I've tried about 99 of each stone so far but the augments seem so completely random, does it even make a difference?

Pellucid will give you the best chances at a solid acc/att augment.

The especially attractive part about choosing stones for me is that it will roll something in the desired category.

If I'm looking for fast cast, I'm rolling fern because half the pellucid/taupe rolls may not have anything in that category (whether it be fast cast, mdb, wsd (lol)).

That's a great point and thank you for bringing it up! I meant to ask that as well. Per the BG Wiki page, it looks like the Fern stones allow to break the cap for stats like Magic Damage, Magic Burst Damage, etc, as it's in brackets with a higher value? So, if I use Fern stones, it's still possible to hit the +40 potential cap of MACC/MAB?

So the part of the reason Ladyofhonor suggested pellucid stones for this is, while Fern stones are capable of breaking the magic burst damage cap, it's only by 1 percent extra (11% vice 10%) And it typically is less consistent with getting that stat with high values on att/acc. I would say from my own experience, and yes, I understand this is anecdotal, but Pellucid stones seem to have a better chance of giving you something in the neighborhood of 35att/35acc+ and 8~10 burst damage. It's possible to get 40/40 and 11 burst damage on a Fern stone in theory, but the numbers are certainly not in your favor.

The thing is, the testing so far (which can be found here: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Category:Escha_Rewards/Arcane_Glyptics_Inscription)
seems to indicate that the only way for 40/attack to occur is to actually get the slot 1 and slot 4 augment to total out to 40. There are multiple problems associated with that. One being that the total can exceed 40, and when it does, it drops the 4th augment and that only happens when you don't get the "combined" augment, which is the one you would want.

In addition to that, Pellucid stones are the only stones that guarantee the first slot for accuracy which gives out the lion's share of that accuracy stat. (This only really becomes obvious when you export a set into gearswap where you can see how it balances out).

So the math even when you force the first slot is not in your favor AT ALL. (as I'm sure you've noticed.)

EVEN assuming the chance of the first slot you have to get the "off-path" augment to get 25/25 combined MAB/M.acc which is already only 10%, then you have to get the max augment, which is 1/25. That's already only 0.4% but it doesn't end there!

You have a 40% chance each at slot 4 and 5 which luckily are just Accuracy and Attack, but to get them both together your chances take another depressing drop to 0.064% that's just to get the max augment slot 1 and the slot 4 and 5 to both appear, that's not even max augment.

You may have noticed this hasn't even factored in Slot 2.
Fern forces slot 2, which sounds great but it's already a very common slot to get pretty much regardless of which stone you use, and it only increases the maximum potential of the slot 2 augment by 1. If you're specifically making a fast cast piece, or a WSD augment or whatever else, this is actually in your favor to a large degree which is why for Melee armors, fern stones aren't a bad idea at all. But changing a slot you only have a 0.4% chance of getting what you want (or around a 1~2% chance of getting something pretty good) from a guaranteed slot into one that only has a 60% chance to appear for only 1 more burst damage really just isn't worth the effort. When you're trying to reach that sort of optimization you're much better off putting your gil into either an Amalric +1 set, or Mythic.

TL;DR Just use pellucid stones, fern stones have higher possible outcome with abysmal success rate.

Got this with a fern a while back... I haven't got anything close since on other pieces. But it's out there if you have the gil and the patience...

And Taupe for Grioavolr :) if you're really going for a Grand Slam and have 999999999 gil

So I'm looking to make a BLM simply for fights where melee/cor isn't viable. Generally I have COR and RUN as my "useful" jobs but I find myself with LS mates that have COR and RUN (each!) and so someone has to shift as needed. I'm looking to make a very short-inventory set as I go a little all out on my main jobs, and was thinking of:

Lathi/Enki/ /reisen t2 ammo
Pixie or Merlinic/Mizukage/Bark/Frio?
Merlinic/Amalric/Mujin/Archon or Locus
Ambuscade/Eschan Stone/Merlinic/Merlinic

Is it worth making separate Ambuscade capes, one for death and one for non-death? Should my death cape have FC on it? Any major gear I'm missing? Should I focus on hitting full FC or can I do acceptably well close enough and what % do I need with Dark Arts? I'll always be running with an Idris GEO at all times when I'm on BLM, so I have that working for me.

There's nothing wrong w/ the set you listed, but just know before going into it that any mage job requires (a lot) more than just stellar FC and MB sets -- and for BLM you really need to be 2100 to put a dent in anything hard.


Yes.


I would opt for MAB or STP (Occult Acumen). Usually in /SCH situations you'll be using Alacrity and getting at least one (if not multiple) forms of haste support -- fast cast isn't going to make a big difference on recast.


You need full ~80% FC. The BLM who lands MB's first, and MB's the most times, usually wins parse... not always necessarily the person w/ the best nuking sets. Dark Arts is multiplicative, so you'll still need like 77%-78% to cap as /SCH. As /RDM, you have more leeway.

At the minimum, you need an idle -DT set, idle refresh set, a regular nuking set (you only showed MB), a general FC set, a high-mp FC set (for death, so your precast doesn't knock like 500 mp off), an INT enfeebling set (sleep, breakga, burn), an aspir set, a Myrkr set, and a stun set.

I agree the 80% fastcast is SO nice on BLM. I cannot stress the value of this, not only for nuking but self buffing. Your sets look adequate to me. 2 BLM capes, 1 for nukes, 1 for death.

Fancier stuff:
Cure set
Aspir/Drain set
Enfeebling set
Enhancing duration(50/50 telchine is very nice)
Melee/TP (Omen this is nice or occult for tp)
Treasure Hunter (our BLM gets TH4 on Mini/Megaboss on Omen)
Cure cheat set (omen objective)

Updated lua on GitHub now automatically will handle using conserve mp body sets.ConsMP when mp is under 520 this works with all casting modes. also the message warning that break is wearing off also now works when using breakga ^^ also you can visit page at Blm.lua

Blm lua has been updated. No longer uses two lua's to handle mp changes, has all armor in argument section removed so only sets need to be changed. Mana wall has been fixed for the pdt set.

Degrade array still needs to be addressed but large improvements over all.

Why would you precast in marin staff tho?

Normally you would be locking your main weapon with the built in F9 function on the lua.

In some situations you would want the fast cast, such as if you are subbing Scholar and in your PDT set, meaning you'd be swapping to Terra's staff in idle anyway and losing TP, and you also wouldn't have /rdm's bonus to fast cast.